Sunday, November 30, 2008

I love Buddhism for all it has taught me both spiritually and magickally. Over the years however I have found a lot that I disagree with. If it wasnt for the inherent freedom in Dzogchen View that transcends all this, I could never really call myself a Buddhist.

LAGOS (AFP) — The Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual and temporal leader, on Friday said sex spelt fleeting satisfaction and trouble later, while chastity offered a better life and "more freedom."

"Sexual pressure, sexual desire, actually I think is short period satisfaction and often, that leads to more complication," the Dalai Lama told reporters in a Lagos hotel, speaking in English without a translator.

He said conjugal life caused "too much ups and downs.

"Naturally as a human being ... some kind of desire for sex comes, but then you use human intelligence to make comprehension that those couples always full of trouble. And in some cases there is suicide, murder cases," the Dalai Lama said.

He said the "consolation" in celibacy is that although "we miss something, but at the same time, compare whole life, it's better, more independence, more freedom."

Considered a Buddhist Master exempt from the religion's wheel of death and reincarnation, the Dalai Lama waxed eloquent on the Buddhist credo of non-attachment.

"Too much attachment towards your children, towards your partner," was "one of the obstacle or hindrance of peace of mind," he said....

Now, I love the Dalai Lama. I think he is one of of the most realized beings on the planet. I also know that when he speaks, he is speaking to the world, and thus towing the Sutric Busshist line, not the Tantric Buddhist line. Or, as Glenn Mullin once told me "Almost everything the Dalai Lama has ever told me in private about Tantra, contradicts something he has said in public.

But even as a the line you give to the public, I just cant get behind it. Its life dood. Without its downs there are no ups. I realize that normal people may look to some meditators like Bi-polar people look to normal people, but its all about harmony. Emotions serve a purpose. Birth in a body serves a purpose.

I am down with the whole chain of interdependant origination except for the first stage: that manifestation grows from ignorance.

Besides. If, as even Sutric Buddhism states, a human rebirth is the most precious type of birth, what good does people not having sex do? No sex, no birth man.

Speaking of object links, I took on a fairly complex matter for a client this week. I wish all clients were like her. Supplied personal links AND photos for herself and all other targets in the spell. She used teh internet to gain birth date info on those that she didnt have that data on. Everything was in separate bags clearly labeled.

She actually went through the trouble of mailing some material that might have been used in a hexing in a totally separate package.

Saturday, November 29, 2008

I was tired and exhaused from editing and I cranked out a few paragraphs that sounded good at midnight and read like pomous crap the next day. Worse than that, it made it sound like I was starting my own magickal system, which is not my intent.

Friday, November 28, 2008

The Rider deck was the first deck I ever read with, and the symbolism is top notch in my book. Its not to bare in the minor arcana like older Marseilles and Visconti decks, but its not over laden with specized symbols like the Thoth and GD Tarots. I just have always hated the art on the Rider deck. Everyone does.

So I bounced around to Rider clones, which are nicer looking, but always manage to screw it up somehow with something I hate. My favorite of these is the Morgan Greer, but I am not crazy for some of those cards either. I have used some re-colored rider decks in the past as well, but always found them lacking.

A Hand Painted Rider Deck that maintains all the symbols and art of the original rider, but is different enough with the colors and backgrounds to make it interesting. I ordered my deck from Carol on Tuesday and got it today.

I am loving it. You can tell a lot of care went into these.

The cards themselves are not like the cardstock that you would find from a store bought deck. They are glossy laminated cards which make the deck both thicker and more flexible than a standard deck, yet they are amazingly easy to shuffle. In fact, because they are hand done, there is something about them that reminds me of my first experience with Tarot, which was with a deck that my friend Don and I actually photocopied out of Waits Key to the Tarot from the Library, than cut out with scissors when we were in 8th grade.

I purchased the medium sized deck without the irridescent paint added. The only things I dont like are the backs of the cards (sort of a dusty violet star pattern) and that some ofthe cards have the names changed, like death below. But overall, that doesnt bother me much.

Carol was very kind to include several gift cards including a version of the magician with the irridescent paint in the large style, the magician cards from the Tarot Revele, an image of Set, and a few cards from her Chakra card series. She also includes a lined bag that form fits the deck and has one of your favorite cards mounted onto it. Very nice touches.

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Sometimes people want to do spells involving the saints, but confess to me that they aren’t Christian and want to know if it’s ok. Its funny how, this only happens with Christian figures. Nobody seems to care that they aren’t a Buddhist or Hindu to work with Kurukulla or not an ancient Greek to work with Hekate, but because we live in a Christian culture, working magick with the saints or angels can seem more taboo. My advice is this: just do the spell with devotion to deity as you understand it, but do it according to the rules of the tradition it comes from. In other words, do not call upon St Martha in the name of Artemis or Odin.

She won’t like it. Just as its impolite to visit a foreign country and demand that everyone follow your customs (though I have seen that often enough), its impolite to call force Saints and Dakinis and Spirits and Loa and whatever into formats that they aren’t comfortable with. After you make contact, you can work out some different conditions with the spirit, but don’t approach them that way from the start.

I'm Not One Of Those 'Love Thy Neighbor' Christians

Everybody has this image of "crazy Christians" based on what they hear in the media, but it's just not true. Most Christians are normal, decent folks. We don't all blindly follow a bunch of outdated biblical tenets or go all fanatical about every bit of dogma. What I'm trying to say is, don't let the actions of a vocal few color your perceptions about what the majority of us are like.

Like me. I may be a Christian, but it's not like I'm one of those wacko "love your neighbor as yourself " types.

God forbid!

I'm here to tell you there are lots of Christians who aren't anything like the preconceived notions you may have. We're not all into "turning the other cheek." We don't spend our days committing random acts of kindness for no credit. And although we believe that the moral precepts in the Book of Leviticus are the infallible word of God, it doesn't mean we're all obsessed with extremist notions like "righteousness" and "justice."

My faith in the Lord is about the pure, simple values: raising children right, saying grace at the table, strictly forbidding those who are Methodists or Presbyterians from receiving communion because their beliefs are heresies, and curing homosexuals. That's all. Just the core beliefs. You won't see me going on some frothy-mouthed tirade about being a comfort to the downtrodden.

I'm a normal Midwestern housewife. I believe in the basic teachings of the Bible and the church. Divorce is forbidden. A woman is to be an obedient subordinate to the male head of the household. If a man lieth down with another man, they shall be taken out and killed. Things everybody can agree on, like the miracle of glossolalia that occurred during Pentecost, when the Apostles were visited by the Holy Spirit, who took the form of cloven tongues of fire hovering just above their heads. You know, basic common sense stuff.

But that doesn't mean I think people should, like, forgive the sins of those who trespass against them or anything weird like that.

We're not all "Jesus Freaks" who run around screaming about how everyone should "Judge not lest ye be judged," whine "Blessed are the meek" all the time, or drone on and on about how we're all equal in the eyes of God! Some of us are just trying to be good, honest folks who believe the unbaptized will roam the Earth for ages without the comfort of God's love when Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior returns on Judgment Day to whisk the righteous off to heaven.

Now, granted, there are some Christians on the lunatic fringe who take their beliefs a little too far. Take my coworker Karen, for example. She's way off the deep end when it comes to religion: going down to the homeless shelter to volunteer once a month, donating money to the poor, visiting elderly shut-ins with the Meals on Wheels program—you name it!

But believe me, we're not all that way. The people in my church, for the most part, are perfectly ordinary Americans like you and me. They believe in the simple old-fashioned traditions—Christmas, Easter, the slow and deliberate takeover of more and more county school boards to get the political power necessary to ban evolution from textbooks statewide. That sort of thing.

We oppose gay marriage as an abomination against the laws of God and America, we're against gun control, and we fervently and unwaveringly believe that the Jews, Muslims, and all on earth who are not born-again Pentecostalists are possessed by Satan and should be treated as such.

When it comes down to it, all we want is to see every single member of the human race convert to our religion or else be condemned by a jealous and wrathful God to suffer an eternity of agony and torture in the Lake of Fire!

I hope I've helped set the record straight, and I wish you all a very nice day! God bless you!

Sunday, November 23, 2008

Not the story. The movie. I saw this movie when I was 12 and I just saw it again last night. Clearly it deeply effected my little 12 year old psyche.You know that things are not gonna go well when the movie opens with Gidget holding the Necronomicon.

Lots of fun to re-watch it now that I know the shite I know.

Terrible movie of course, but any movie where a semi nude Sandra Dee orgasmically gyrates on a stone altar with the Necronomicon between her legs isnt all bad.

More rituals should be like that.

If you are thinking to yourself that I probably only made this post so that I could post a picture and movie of Dean Stockwell invoking Yog Sothoth into Gidget you are entirely correct.

Had a dream last night that I founded a Christian magickal order dedicated to practical magick as charity.

The initiation lasted 2 weeks starting on a Monday and required the aspirant to summon an archangel every other day and ask for an empowerent. That brought them through all seven planetary archangels in order: Mon, Wed, Friday, Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.

On the Sunday morning after the last evocation we would perform a Mass followed by a formal induction of the aspirant into the order. There were no grades, only offices that performed certain functions.

In writing a bit for the book on Legal Magick I remembered a link that Mike Rock had placed to a Hoodoo List about a courtcase that was closed because of a white powder that was mailed in to the Judge. That link was dead, so I decided to google "Courthouse, Powder, Envelope".

Holy Crap.

Everyone is doing this. Everywhere.

We live in the age of terrorism and anthrax scares. Unless you want to compound whatever reason you are in court for with a nice FBI investigation and wind up in Federal PMITA Prison...

We of the Esoteric Order of Dagon can recognise the signs when they appear. Soon the time will come when we are called to the Plataeu of Leng and will look down upon the carnage below as the old ones emerge from the spaces between !!!! The True Rapture of Starry Wisdom!!!

Sunday, November 9, 2008

Here is another short little excerpt from the chapter on Love Magick that I am writing tonight.

TYPES OF LOVE MAGICK

I divide love magick into two main categories: attraction and relationship magick. The bulk of this chapter will be about attraction, as that what most classical love magick is devoted to. We will cover love magick at the end of the chapter.

Attraction magick is further divided into types: making someone specific become attracted to you, and attracting people that would naturally be attracted to you. Most ancient love magick is devoted to the former. Spells for forcing specific women to love you, or philtres fed to young men to arouse lust are common in medieval spell books, the greek papyri, and even in Indian alchemical texts. Most modern love magick is devoted to the latter purpose, feeling that it is better to allow the magick to guide you than to directly influence someone’s will. My own approach is a combination of the two, as each has their strengths and weaknesses.

There is nothing wrong with attempting to win the love of a girl that you are smitten with. Nothing wrong with pursuing a man that initially shows no interest. Some of the worlds greatest love stories have arisen from such endeavors. There comes a point however where attraction can become obsession and a case of unrequited love should just be accepted. Using magick to attract a mate that would naturally be attracted to you can be a useful alternative, but I am skeptical of turning my life’s path over to “the spirits” or trusting “the magick” to guide my life. Being a Sorcerer or Sorceress means making decisions for yourself; and taking responsibility for those decisions. Another option is to make a list of attractive features and tendencies that we would like our potential lover to have. Unfortunately even when these types of spells get fulfilled to the letter, the reality always seems to fall short. In the end what makes us attractive is not just a bunch of qualities that we can rattle off like a grocery list.

We need ultimately to be the ones that decide who we pursue as potential lovers, but we also need the openness to let magick, chance, and providence provide opportunities that we may not see if we are too fixated on a specific person, or even a specific type.

Since I am having trouble getting my final three day write-a-thon off the ground I thought I would post something here to get the fingers tapping.

A few weeks ago I was reading a book about the Nazi occultist Karl Wiligut. A friend commented "So you’re into Runes now?”. Not as something I feel the need to do as a magician, no, but as an occultist yes. He didn’t quite get the distinction.

I am an occultist and a magician. The occultist is a historian and anthropologist of the hidden religio-magic traditions of the whole planet. Nothing is out of bounds. There are areas that I specialize in, like Tibetan Occultism, New Orleans Rootwork, etc, but there is almost nothing that I am not at all interested in as an occultist. There are also things that I will spend months researching that I have no interest in spiritually, just because they interest me intellectually.

As a magician, I am interested in taking things that I know as an occultist and enacting them in a spiritual path and sorcerous action. The roots of my magick practice are by necessity more narrow than my interests as an occultist. My wide interest as an occultist does however open up my spiritual practice to incorporating things that resonate with me even if they are from variant cultural or spiritual traditions.

Knowing that these people over here work magick this way, and those people over there do it a completely different way assists me in not slipping into fundamentalist views about a particular tradition. On the other hand spending a significant amount of time learning traditions from their own cultural perspective without drawing comparisons right off the bat, keeps me from slipping into the sort of nihilistic conclusions of chaos magick or outright silly eclecticism of most of the modern neo-pagan movements.

The occultist in me may be reading a book about sects of Japanese skull fucking Buddhists* but that doesn’t mean that the magician in me is going to start practicing it.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

For those that don't know, I am a huge West Wing fan. During the primary I started to see a lot of correspondences between the election and the last two seasons of the West Wing. Ractiial minority cantidate, dems go almost to the convention, Republicans nominate a moderate who is not as socially conservative as the party platform. Etc, etc.

These continued through the general election. For instance the Republican was ahead until a disaster hit, a nuke plant meltdown on the show, an economic crisis in real life.

Now its even stranger. Obama has asked Rahm Emmanuel to be his Chief of Staff. The character Josh Lyman is based upon Rahm Emmanuel. Josh Lyman ends up as Santos Chief of Staff.

This book has been long coming. I post a note below from my friend Vaj:

Finally, after years of refinement, the text of Vairochana and the instructions on the Union of the Sun and Moon yantras has been released. I encourage you to get a copy, as it's extremely unusual that such teachings would ever have been been published publicly if it weren't for the open-minded policies of Namkhai Norbu.

The great advantage of this particular set of yantras is that, unlike the yantras associated with the various inner tantras, these don't require the elaborate visualizations of deities so common in the anuttara tantras. In Dzogchen-style yantra-yoga, you are as you are. There is nothing that needs modified because the enlightened condition is there, in all of us, from the beginning. And so the visualizations are easy ones anyone can do. I'm hoping this will be of some benefit for others. Having trained in the various traditional hatha-yoga or sun-moon asanas since the 70's, it was clear to me, they knew what the various postures still were, but they really (by and large) were clueless about what their real inner meaning was.

Having worked with these yantras for a few years, it's clear, whoever originated them had a profound understanding about human neurology and the subtle mechanics of prana as relates to how consciousness is experienced in adult humans. I really can say, from personal experience, the yantras are a good way to ripen our body, voice and mind and actualize many of the practices we've all heard about. Needless to say, learning such practices has an incredible purificatory benefit that is probably unsurpassed. I've been around the block more than once, and this is best I've experienced, esp. for married, everyday folks.

Now's a great window of opportunity to learn this system. A tour is in progress, check out the Dzogchen Community's website as it has links to the tour and the book. If you buy it off the DC website, they'll get more financial benefit that way. Since purchasing off both the Dzogchen Community website and the Shang Shung Institute now require membership, all you have to do is buy a preliminary membership fee to join the SSI, 7 bucks. And you get that much off in a discount when you buy the YY book there.

Most magicians look to astrology to find auspicious times to accomplish various works. Not to diminishthe import of this ancient occult practice, but I have always felt that the weight that the stars and planets have upon the earth is dwarfed by the psychic weight of events that are actually occuring right here.

If you are even the slightest bit psychic, you can sense an enormous shift today. An upheaval in the force. Many people accomplished something that others thought unthinkable. Others have had thier ideas of nation and government rocked to the core. This causes a HUGE psychic shift that can be taken advantage of by the cunning magician.

So. If you are looking to start a diet, to begin writing a book, to stop smoking, to find a lover, to change careers. Whatever it is that you have been having trouble finding the energy and tenacity to accomplish: try it NOW.

Sit down and meditate. Feel for the edges of your mind, than push past them. Those boundaries are illusions. Mind is infinite and knows no boundaries. Tap into the feelings of hope, progress, and success that are arising in the mindstream of the country, and indeed the world. Than invoke the higher powers as ye may know how, and perform a self-dedication rite to the work at hand. Than set about its accomplishment with zeal.

The best part is that your success in the project, be it magickal or mundane, will feed back into the matrix of awareness and lift it even higher.

I do not believe in the hard separation of Witchcraft/folk magic and Ceremonial Magick.

Note how many grimoires have extensive chapters on "natural magick" and how many traditions of Wicca are utterly reliant upon ceremonial magick tech. Anyone that has ever seen a Gardnerian BOS, will see it in spades.

I think that they occupy different edges of the same spectrum, but my own work is to encompass that entire spectrum, not be pidgeon holed into one part of it.

My comments in that post were supposed to be just poking fun of people making simple paper sigils or doing simpathetic magick, yet still looking down on "low magick" or "spells" because thier "working" was preceeded by an LBRP. I was really just making fun of something I read earlier today in a locked journal.

When reading through various blogs and records of rituals I am struck by how many rites of simple witchcraft and folk magick get to be called "Ceremonial Magick" because they are preceeded by an LBRP and a BRH.

Draw a few geometric shapes in the corners of your bedroom and suddenly its not a spell, its a working.

About Me

I am the man behind Strategic Sorcery.
My published works include "Financial Sorcery, Magical Strategies for Creating Real and Lasting Wealth", "The Sorcerer's Secrets, Strategies in Practical Magick" and "Protection and Reversal Magick".
To buy books, take my course, or check out my schedule go to WWW.INOMINANDUM.COM